Darwin Awards Jokes / Recent Jokes
There are many transmission lines that crisscross Connecticut. These are held up by transmission towers of various constructions. Those most commonly installed near urban areas are called "metal ornamental towers" (supposedly prettier than wood towers). Sometimes adventurous climb the towers in order to enjoy the view and the night air. Most stay away from the wires, and when they get bored, come back down.
Apparently, a man who was forlorn after a recent spat with his girlfriend needed some fresh air to clear his head and decided to climb a tower. He stopped for a 6 pack to help clear his thoughts, went to a tower south of Hartford, next to I-91, and climbed it. Public Service employees later pieced the story together.
The man sat there 60 feet above the highway, drank his beer and consoled his bruised ego. After 5 beers, he needed to do what people often need to do after 5 beers. It being such a long hike down, he unzipped and did his business right more...
16 April 1999, Washington D. C.) We can thank our lucky stars that there are two fewer paramedics around. Carol and Mark were found dead in their suburban home by Mark's 14-year-old son. The couple were wearing respiratory masks attached to an empty canister of nitrous oxide.
Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, produces a short-lived high, and is often used as a relaxant in dental offices and outpatient clinics. Like every other pure gas, it must be mixed with air or oxygen, lest it cause suffocation. Needless to say, Carol and Mark did not mix the nitrous oxide with air.
What makes this story a true Darwin Award candidate is that both of the deceased had enough medical training to known better. Mark was a 10-year veteran paramedic with the District of Columbia Fire Department. Carol was studying to become an emergency medical technician in a suburban fire department.
Even more amusing is a quote from the Washington D. C. Fire Department's more...
Telephone relay company night watchman Edward Baker, 31, was killed early Christmas morning by excessive microwave radiation exposure. He was apparently attempting to keep warm next to a telecommunications feed-horn.
Baker had been suspended on a safety violation once last year, according to Northern Manitoba Signal Relay spokesperson Tanya Cooke. She noted that Baker's earlier infraction was for defeating a safety shut-off switch and entering a restricted maintenance catwalk in order to stand in front of the microwave dish.
He had told coworkers that it was the only way he could stay warm during his twelve-hour shift at the station, where winter temperatures often dip to forty below zero. Microwaves can heat water molecules within human tissue in the same way that they heat food in microwave ovens.
For his Christmas shift, Baker reportedly brought a twelve pack of beer and a plastic lawn chair, which he positioned directly in line with the strongest more...
A 22-year-old Reston man was found dead yesterday after he tried to use' boccy' straps (the stretchy little ropes with hooks on each end) to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle, police said.
Fairfax County police said Eric A. Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped... and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby.
"The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground," Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was "major trauma." An autopsy is scheduled for later in the week.
Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let fly - and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop!
Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive-oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him like a dump truck full of mud.
"The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground, where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him," said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern. "With no one there to help him, he lay under all that dung for at least an hour before a watchman came along, and during that time he suffocated. It seems to be just one of those freak accidents.
(14 July 2000, Canada)
It was a dare that Sheldon, 25, will literally never take again. He and a group of friends found themselves at a Calgary apartment after an evening spent at a local bar. It was there that a joking challenge was issued. "Who wants to ride the in-house water slide?" The slide was actually a garbage chute.
Sheldon volunteered, tumbled into the opening, and his subsequent headlong slide beat the standard elevator service down to the first floor. An unforgiving trash compactor awaited his arrival, and friends administered CPR there until emergency crews arrived at the scene. But they were too late.
The 12-story fall had already dispatched Sheldon to his Darwinian demise.
A 27-year old woman from France lost control over her car on a highway near Marseilles and crashed into a tree seriously injuring her co-driver and killing herself. Accidents like this occur quite often and usually don't qualify for a Darwin Award nomination.
This accident is special because the drivers attention for the road was distracted by her Tamagotchi which hang on the car keys and beeped for food. Wanting to save the Tamagotchis life the French woman ignored the road and killed herself.